Just Let Yourself be on the Paper

He, 17 years old, came to live with us for his O-Level exams, because of his father’s transfer to another city. He had missed an academic session due to appendicitis that occurred accidently right at the 2nd paper of his GCSE exams and consequently he could not appear in rest of his papers.The unexpected episode took him to extreme depression as he had never faced failure in life and was cherishing life as the most promising all-rounder of his school. But then, with the loss of a year all his friends of 11 years were promoted leaving him behind. And, he did not know how to cope up with the situation. Then, when he was preparing again for the same examination, he most of the time remained in his room. Once, when I got worried about him, I opened his room door quietly, saw him lying on his sofa with the opened book covering his face. I removed the book and found his tears running down his eyes and touching his side bum. It happened a couple of times and I could not bear his silent crying and agony he was going through. When my counselling couldn’t make much difference, I took him to a psychiatrist, who asked him to write down his all story, feelings, fears, wishes and desires for his future and so. He did it. And, in the coming sessions he was supposed to write more as assignments on psychiatrist’s advice until I started to see him writing it on daily basis.

Gradually, it helped him put his turmoil on the paper and the catharsis calmed him down enough to concentrate again on his studies. Also, he started to laugh and chat again and began to continue with his recreational activities as well. Finally, he went through his exams successfully and told me that he learnt a lot about himself and his life through writing.

By coincidence, I was attending a creative writing workshop in fiction. For short story, when it was reality based, I had to question on each and every step, what exactly happened at a certain point? Thus, I cleared so many knots in my mind. I came to know about the dilemmas and conflicts of my mind on those matters. Likewise, when it was an imaginative work, I had to think what could be happened naturally and logically at a particular point? It assisted me to proceed the story in a realistic way.I used both the experiences in different phases of my life and found myself to be able to see the truth of various intellectual, social and emotional matters revealing to me. Even, if a concept is incomplete or vague to me, I start writing to see it clearly and completely. Similarly, when some thought bother me by occurring to my mind again and again and hindering my work, I just stop working, take a couple of minutes to jot it down on a piece of paper in the hope of dealing with it later on and it helped me truly to focus on my work. Thus, I learnt about the new aspects of writing that I would like to share with others as well.When we have to go through a down phase, a dilemma, conflict, stress, physical or emotional accident, personal failure, death of a dear one or whatever, we take different ways to deal with it. First, we might go through pain, anxiety, numbness, crying, or so. Then, we try to figure out the practical solutions to fix our issues. Even then, when we are unable to face the despair and agony, we try different things to calm ourselves down, like counselling, medication, alcohol, drugs, meditation, astrology, prayers or so, depending upon one’s beliefs. But here, people are unaware of the power of writing.Writing is a very effective catharsis. If you are a born writer, you will certainly have many genres to express yourself; fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, but even if you are a non-writer in a strict or formal sense, even then you can use writing as your healing and soothing tool. You need not to worry about your handwriting, grammar, spellings, composition or even how to begin, because no one is going to see and judge it but only you. What you have to do is just write down whatever comes to your mind immediately and in a flow, without being judgmental about your thoughts or worrying about their awkwardness, silliness or negativity. Just let yourself come on the paper without any shame or embarrassment, so that you get calmed down…For instance, if someone or some incident hurts you, makes you jealous, regretful, unfair or whatsoever, just write it down. Write whatever have happened, how and why did it happen? Your feelings, fears, thoughts, and everything in detail and in sequence. If you stuck somewhere, ask yourself what actually have happened at a particular point? It will help you to be clarified in your mind and look at the matter as it was. Finally, it will enable you to look at the issue with all its dimensions; it will reveal your subconscious to you, and, your deeper desires, deficiencies, and inner truths to you.Once your emotions are evaporated this way, you will feel yourself lighter and ready to think with clarity and objectively, which may lead you to a solid and practical solution. Once you come to it and pen it down, you might feel the strength, confidence, and motivation to implement it. It’s matter of experience, so experience it without any doubt.If we practice it and teach our children to do so, we need not to rely on negative options like drugs, alcohol, astrology, etc. Writing Personal Journal is a very beneficial habit, where we need not to be regular, but whenever we feel overwhelmed, tensed, confused or so, we can use it as a window to catharsis and clarity.

You are very right Ayesha, but it’s matter of training as well. Unfortunately, the people who are interested in writing also don’t write in our society because they are not aware of its beneficial use in their lives.

Writing is a powerful tool to express our deep emotions but as said above every one does not enjoy writing . Only people who enjoy writing knows the beauty of it and take powerful messages across the world through your own thoughts .